


The Perfect Home

by TheMockingCrows



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Anal Sex, M/M, Oral Sex, paranormal activity, possibly triggering content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-30
Updated: 2013-01-30
Packaged: 2017-11-27 12:32:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/662038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMockingCrows/pseuds/TheMockingCrows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Please read with caution, as, for the sake of the story, not all triggers can be tagged.</p><p> </p><p>John and Dave are living a happy life together in the perfect house. When they suddenly are plagued by mysterious, and sometimes terrifying troubles, how will they manage to keep hold of their paradise?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Perfect Home

Your name is John Egbert, and you’re finally getting to relax after being busy for the longest time.

You’ve really earned this rest, you believe, and you have a distinct feeling that things are going to look up from here. Your Monday morning greets you curled up in bed with your boyfriend, arms around his narrow waist to keep his lithe body flush against your front. He’s bent his legs while unconscious, postured like a running in full sprint, making it easier to tuck your knees up behind his and stand in as a chair. Maybe like a second skin along his back, warm and comforting, feeling his heart beat steadily along with the gentle rise and fall of his chest.

He’s so small, by comparison. So fragile. You can wrap your hand around his thigh with a bit of room to spare, if you actually try. He doesn’t let you do that very often, says it annoys him. Dave’s usually so calm, but now and then the differences get on his nerves, like how tall you’ve gotten, having to hand him things from the top shelf, how broad your shoulders became over the years while he stayed the same. You love how red his face gets when he gets pissy and indignant, turning the razz about his stature into any number of joking insults to make himself feel better.

You love his blush, and when he yells. You even love it when he cries, working his hardest to keep his face perfectly still as he breaths through his nose, only barely twitching when the hiccups start.  Even the time when he legitimately cries, loses the ability to keep it together for a short time and needs to be held till it passes are precious to you.

Everything about him is perfect, and makes you so happy you’re here with him in your own home.

Every day you wake up to him being there, and every night you kiss him before going to sleep, knowing that the next day will be the same. Repetition in harmony for as long as you’re together, like two hands dancing around a clock face.

You’re awake before him, humming softly and shifting around under the thick plaid comforter and soft sheets, pointing your toes and pulling your legs back enough to stretch the life back down their lengths. The rush to your head almost makes you dizzy, restlessness hitting like a brick. The urge to move is almost impossible to ignore, so it’s put to constructive use, sending your lips to the back of his neck to kiss and nibble at the soft skin in a half assed attempt to rouse him. If he continued to sleep, you don’t think you’d have minded so long as it gave ample opportunity to begin slowly rolling over to cage him in your arms as you feasted along his nape.

“Ugh.. Dude, it’s called sleeping in for a reason, y’know? Down boy. Bad dog, worst boyfriend, let me sleep.”

His red eyes are still sleep fogged and dim, heavy above dark bags, bruised blue black on his pale skin.  Not aiming in the slightest he bats at you half-heartedly, wanting to sleep but wanting to continue feeling your lips and teeth, the ghosting glance of your tongue as you trace a swath of freckles till it’s damp.

In the end, the desire to be touched won out over sleeping longer as he arched and curled rhythmically beneath you, hooking his fingers into your pajama pants to tug them downwards impatiently. His logic was, “You woke up me and little Dave, and now you’ve gotta pay the price. You stop a minute before I’m comatose or you throw your back out, I’ll flip you over and jump you so fast your head’ll spin.”  Dave’s boxers were off in a heartbeat, legs already spread and waiting to get what he wanted, moaning out your name as you slipped down to taste him. Excitement made him louder, legs shuddering, chest heaving as your mouth engulfed his dick and took it down to the root, swallowing hard around it till he keened.

What a way to wake up.

Dave falls to pieces after your lips trail downwards from the gently pulsing head, racing a fresh dribble of pre-come down the length to suckle at his balls, nose bumping the velvety skin when you pull back to go even lower. Without warning you tug his legs up to rest on your shoulders, thumbs hooking into the pliant flesh of his ass to spread the cheeks apart. You need the extra room for your tongue, after all, licking from bottom to top a few times before teasing him until he was almost screaming.

It doesn’t take much to make him come hard, shooting towards his own chest with the first spurt, and into your hand for the rest of it. Don’t want to lose too much, after all, considering it’ll serve as a good addition to the impromptu lube of your saliva for the next part. You’re excited and hard as stone when you rise upwards on your knees and rub the back of your clean hand over your mouth to clear it, messy hand picking up where your mouth had left off to get him ready.

He’s still not even begun to come down from his high, and here you are working him back into a frenzy already, making both thin legs fall open wide and wanting as he attempts in vain to make a tempo against your probing fingers. You’re not moving fast enough for him. Never fast enough, never hard enough, never too much. You know from experience it takes multiple rounds to sate both your appetites, and odds are this laid back day will find you seeking one another out multiple times.  You smile at him, admire the contortions of his body and the sweat running down his flushed chest as he begs for you to get on with it and pound him into the mattress. Music to your ears.

Were it not for the sound of the front door opening, you would have done just that.

The front door should not open. You two are the only ones with keys, and you made a point of locking up before bed last night just like you always do. The new noise even startles Dave from his trance, head snapping towards the door before looking up at you in worried confusion.

Are you being robbed in broad daylight?

Murmuring an apology, promising to rock his world properly later, you put on your glasses and crawl from the mattress, walking to the corner to dig out a shirt and clean your hand off.  Still tugging on your pajama pants from the foot of the bed, you saunter to the hallway and peer down the stairwell. There are no sounds downstairs, a good sign so far that maybe you’re not in fact being robbed.

Maybe it was just the house settling in its foundation, old and creaking. As you start down the staircase, you realize Dave’s pulled on his boxers and is following you like a shadow, hair still soaked and stuck to his head, cheeks flushed.

The front door stood wide open, letting in trailing sunlight and morning mist. There seemed to be no signs of it being forced, no footprints leading in from the outside on the hard floor, nothing moved or out of place. If this was a prank, it was getting on your nerves, given what you were about to do with your boyfriend.

“John, you see anyone outside? Maybe they started to come in but ran when they made noise, like the fucking punk they are.” From his tone, Dave seems just as pissed off, paused on the bottom stair to try seeing past you from the safe dimness, arms crossed. When there was still a chance at continuing where you left off, he didn’t want to risk a migraine from the light exposure.

Squinting, you step out to the porch and peer around, hoping to catch sight of an escapees back, footprints, bike tracks. Anything. The slam of the back door startles you badly enough to squeal in a most unmanly way, Dave tearing himself from the stairs to race to the kitchen. He’s so much faster than you, maybe he can catch them in the act.

“When I get my hands ‘round your neck, you’re gonna be beggin’ me t-….”

Though starting his rant with gusto, face twisted with annoyance, his words lost momentum and fell into broken silence. Again, there was nothing he could see or ear. No marks on the back door, or the porch, or the floor. Nothing touched. If anyone had come through your home, they had made a beeline from the front to the back doors and disappeared into thin air.

In boxers and pajama pants, you and Dave take the time to go outside and look closer around the house to make sure nothing else was strange. He hangs on your arm and shields his eyes pre-emptively in case the sky clears and shoots brighter light his way, though the chances were slim this time of year. When it’s not fog, it’s rain after all. You don’t go inside till you’re both chilled and your pants legs are damp from the dew, promising to walk with each other tonight and double check the deadbolts before bed.

Dave gives you a blowjob in the shower, dodging the constant stream of water as he bobbed his head, suds dripping down his bony back and gathering around his knees like a sweet scented cloud. You return the favor by pressing him against the wall and letting him hook his legs over your arms, pressing up into him after a moment or two of hesitation and checking to make sure he was still interested.

You’re both shivering with cold by the time you towel off, hot water never lasting as long as your libidos.

\-----

It’s Wednesday afternoon, soft and rainy, and you’re both enjoying your time together. There’s a sauce bubbling slowly in the kitchen to go over pasta for dinner, low enough that you two take turns stirring it. Dave’s lying on his stomach with his hands on a controller plugged into his laptop, playing an N64 game on an emulator, smirking as Conker slurred and staggered.

Afternoons were your time to practice on the keyboard normally, but today just called for the upright. You stare at the metronome as it moves at an easy tempo, following its speed and direction as you begin your warm ups, letting your fingers stretch and grow limber once more.

Aside from the rain and the occasional soft curse from Dave, the only sounds are from your practice, melody and harmony intertwining as the repetitive scales turn into simple childhood songs and fall into classics learned long ago.

“C’mon, do the tail spin. No, stupid, the TAIL SPIN. ….. I –am- pressing the button, do the stupid mov- DON’T YOU HIT ME! Ugh.. Stupid timing control, c’mon. One more time. C’mon.. C’moooooon,” Dave crooned at the screen, interrupting the flow of Chopin and steady ticking with his hushed chatter. You don’t mind, caught up as you are.

Till you hear a thud loud enough from upstairs  that even Dave looks up, lifting his headphones from his ears, waiting. Watching. The music stops as you remove your hands from the keys, reaching up to stall the ticking of the metronome. Holding your breath, heart in your ears, you flick your eyes down to the small patch of blonde that had been hovering in your peripheral vision in the hopes of finding answers.

His only answer, upon hearing the slam of a door upstairs, is to rush to his feet and race up ahead of you small size meaning nothing in the face of someone or something lurking around his home. You could barely see the color of his shirt as he rounded the top of the stairwell and went straight for the bedroom, meaning to get one of his practice swords. Despite being shitty, it still had a longer reach than his fists and could do a hell of a lot of damage if he really wanted it to.

The door rattled as he turned and tugged the knob, though it remained stuck tight.

“John. JOHN, help me! I think they’re in our room, the door’s jammed shut! I need your shoulder, man, ram this shit down so I can get my hands on them.”

You brace your shoulder against the wood and try to shove and tug it open with force, hitting it with your fist a few times while telling Dave to go get an ice pick, or a screwdriver. This door is coming down, even if you need to break it down like a battering ram. With Dave gone, you rest your ear against the door and listen closely, hearing rustling and banging between your attempts to turn the handle and hammer against the top.

“Are you the same person who came into our house before? Why are you doing this, a bet? Do you like spying on people?! Well I hope you enjoyed your sick thrills, pal, because this hobby’s going to land you in traction! This is OUR house! Do you hear me? OURS. You’re not welcome here!”

The hammering of your fists outside only stops when an actual hammer is handed over, Dave stepping back as you aim the mallet at the handle and swing sharply downwards.  You’re almost sad to see it land on the floor, dented, door damaged. You’d have to replace it later on to salvage the door itself, lovely as it was.

No longer barred out, Dave ran and kicked the door to send it slamming into the wall as it swung the full arc of its hinge, heading to the center of the room and freezing. Trying to spot someone, anyone. The room was a wreck, belongings from the closet thrown into a huge pile on the bed, drawers all open and cleaned out on the floor. Hangers were settled in another pile near the window in a cluster with their storage boxes.

Yet the window was still shut tight, and nobody had come through the door since it had been locked. As far as either of you know, the only ways out are the door you now guard, and the window that would open to the rooftop slant of the second floor. Bracing a hand on either side of the doorway, you ready yourself for someone to run at you as Dave poked around, searching for the hidden trespasser.

The closet was completely empty, even of their belongings, leaving nowhere for the perpetrator to hide. The space beneath the bed, the corners, even the cabinet proved fruitless.

Your locked room, so violated, was totally void of life.

Still armed with the hammer, Dave having grabbed a practice sword, you spend the rest of the raining evening checking every square inch of your home. After checking the basement, the attic, the kitchen and every space between, you attempt to salvage the sauce that had cooked itself down too long and boiled some pasta for a quiet dinner in the kitchen.

“I don’t get it. Is it someone fucking with us for living here? I mean, yeah, not everyone’s cool as they should be with a happy set of homos movin’ in to their neighborhood, but we live almost in the boonies!”

“It’s just the edge of the suburbs, not the boonies, Dave.”

“Same difference, if I have to worry about running into opossums when I go out at night to get something from the yard.”

“Maybe it was just the house settling.”

“The house settling.”

“Yeah, you know. Creaks and bangs and stuff, maybe the door got jammed shut from that. It’s been humid, too. The wood might have swollen,” you offer as you take a bite of the doctored pasta and made a face. Even with the extra tomato juice, it was still too strong. Yuck.

“John, can I ask you something? Just one little thing?” Dave was leaning forward on his elbows, the swinging of his feet stalling as he pointed a damp noodle your direction from the end of his fork. You grimace a bit as the sauce dribbled, not wanting it to stain. “How does a settling house move ten storage boxes and, like, every other damn thing we own and throw it into piles?”

“Well, who would break in just to organize our room into a big mess!”

“I don’t fucking know!”

You both lapse into an angry, strained silence as you eat, stabbing noodles and mopping sauce with floppy pieces of bread to fill the empty gap in your stomachs. By the end of the meal, you keep looking up to try catching Dave’s eyes in silent apology, finding him looking sheepishly the same.

It’s not discussed any longer, neither side having any theories that sounded reasonable. You know for a fact if you so much as hum the Ghostbusters theme song, Dave will threaten to make you sleep alone for a night.

Considering how badly your home is startling you now, you don’t want that at all. You couldn’t risk something happening to either one of you in this place, so the decision was quietly made that whenever possible you would stick together until the source of the problem was deciphered and dealt with properly.

The door is left open, despite the desire to close it and feel safer. If whatever is bothering you can disappear and reappear at will without ever being seen, stealthy enough to get past two of you twice somehow, what chance did you stand of keeping it out of a room with a broken door? After much tossing and turning you fall asleep with your nose buried in Dave’s pale hair, his arms around your waist and a leg slung over your hip, holding on as if he were afraid you’d disappear. He should know better. You’re not going anywhere without him.

\---

Your door is repaired, in the morning.

You did not fix it.

When you and Dave woke, it was to a shut door, and a repaired doorknob. It had been polished, the dent mostly worked out, and the wood was practically seamless. In no way did this look like the door of someone who had attacked it with a hammer. Not a single splinter was out of place on it.

It rocks you both to your cores, and drives you crazy for distraction from the unknown that was plaguing you. After a breakfast neither of you really feel like eating, you go out of your way to do things that will keep the door from being mentioned.

You do laundry and he does the dishes. Instead of using the dryer, you both go outside and hang the things from the line to take advantage of the slight breeze. Dave keeps his shades on and putters around pulling weeds while you take to pruning the bushes near the front door, enjoying the methodical bit of work. The laundry stays in the basket when it’s brought in, because nobody wants to look at the door and fret.

Half a chicken worth of meat in a pot on the stove with some seasonings and vegetables is the progress Dave made with dinner prep by noon, caramelizing onions and making garlic paste while you get out a jar of strawberry jam and a container of cream cheese for sandwiches.  The scent is already intoxicating, and you say as much as you lean easily over his shoulder to observe, offering him his sandwich if he’d only open his mouth.

By dinner, you’ve both accomplished a good deal of odd jobs around the house, cleaning and tidying things, rearranging the furniture in the living room once a better position was found. The soup is a feast for kings after the hours of cooking down, meat tender and juicy, vegetables having given their flavors and absorbed the juice in return.

“Hey, Dave. You did really good with it this time, you’re a pretty fast learner! Gonna have to deduct points, though.”

“Wait, what? Why deduct points, this is perfection incarnate. Egbert, you’re feasting on the food of the gods, courtesy of my nimble hands. Why question manna from heaven that you’ve got no damn problems stuffing your face with, I might point out.” Dave fishes a piece of chicken out of his soup with his spoon, chasing the bits of veggies around the bowl in his attempt to get a little of everything into the body of the spoon, wanting to make a miniature serving.

“Well. Yeah, it’s delicious, but the points are deducted for not wearing pearls or heels.”

“….I’m getting points off a perfect score for not crossdressing?”

“It’s a class thing, and you look adorable in a skirt, what can I say? I’m a simple man with simple needs, Dave,” you muse as you tip your spoon into your mouth again.

“Bite me.”

“Any time.”

“Fuck you!”

“If you insist.”

Dave says he’s mad and refuses to even look at you for a while another pissy mood striking him, childish and unable to shift between modes of reply as smoothly. He hates when you take his write offs and use them in turn to tease him, not able to do more than dumbly repeat the original insult in frustration, looking away from behind his shades.

You make it up to him with an apology for teasing and copious compliments on the food, commenting on how Mrs. Cleaver would lose to him in just about anything. Relaxing further, Dave laughs and agrees with the point that he knows a good many things to do in a set of pumps that would make the woman’s hair curl.

Some of those things are demonstrated without the heels after dinner ends, his mouth trailing down your stomach to bite at the button of your jeans, guiding it open enough to get at your boxers as he sinks to his knees. He doesn’t like just whipping everything out at once, preferring to fish around for your dick each time, build up the sensitivity whenever his knuckles brush against the soft skin as you become more and more aroused.

Anything that lets your boyfriend be more of a tease, you find you enjoy it at least ten times more than usual.

He’s promising sweet things in purring tones as he runs his fingers along the sides of your slowly hardening dick, leaning till you can see his eyes over top of his shades. There was mere millimeters separating his pink tongue from tasting the salty head of your dick when the scraping sounds began in the living room.

It was back.

The person, the thing, the unknown force that had been plaguing your home had returned to action, and not behind a locked door. Scrambling awkwardly from your chair, helping Dave up from the ground even as you tuck yourself back into place behind your button, the two of you make your way to the living room to see the source.

It’s difficult to remember to breathe.

The furniture, every single piece, is moving back and forth about the room. Nothing is unaffected. Contents of shelves float and settle to the floor or the sofa before they’re moved to opposing walls. The sofa itself drifts back into the same position it was in that morning, prior to your moving it around. This… this -thing-  was sending your day of cleaning into reverse, coffee and end tables swinging to their morning positions without being touched.

Dave steps closer to your side to avoid a flowerpot as it moves from one side of the room to the mantle, taking the time to pause and swing in a circle. The couch cushions are adjusted, with the pillows being thrown about like projectiles, crumpling on the floor when its invisible target was missed.

Nobody would ever be able to claim the two of you were cowards in the face of such an assault of the unexplained. Was it ghosts? Demons? You weren’t even sure it had a name. Dave turns at the same time you do, racing for the stairs, wanting to seek refuge in your bedroom. It’s safe there, even if it’s unrealistically so. The door closes and there are blankets, a wall to put yourself against, or a closet to hide in.

You need to lock down.

One of the pillows nearly hits your back as you thud up the stairwell behind Dave, slamming and locking the door behind you so fast that the handle rattles in place, bedframe creaking dangerously as you leap headfirst onto the mattress to hide beneath the nest of bedding. You need to feel safe, instead of cornered, hidden and ready.

You could leave, you think. Walk out and never come back, clutching your boyfriends small hand in a tight fist. You could.. but this is your house. Your home. This is where you were meant to be living, and this is where you will both remain so long as you’re capable.

He’s reaching silently for your hand, mouth open as he sucks in noisy, startled breaths and tries to position his gaze to the bedroom door. You shoosh quietly and smooth the pads of your fingers over his palm as you try to hear downstairs, praying that whatever it is will leave you alone.

Silence greets your ears from the ground floor, and you nearly sigh in relief before there’s a creak of the stairs. It’s footsteps, and not just of one… person? Thing? Thing. If it was a person, you’d be able to see them. It sounded like two or more, different paces, different steps as they disperse down your hall and into the other rooms.

Your doorknob rattles and thuds, miming how you attacked it the day prior.

“John…!”

“Shh! Don’t worry, it’s locked.. If they break it in, we can just run or something. Okay? Just try to be quiet.”

“But, John. We need to move. We need to hide, or attack them, or something.”

“Once we find out how, I promise to let you lay the smack down on them good and proper, okay?”

The two of you press close and stare as the handle continues to rattle, other doors opening and closing, footsteps tracking the cluster as it settles in front of your room again. You grip Dave’s hand hard enough to make him wince as you hear something sliding into the lock.

“Dave. Get ready to run.”

“Run where?”

“Outside.”

“But it’s dark out, that’s even fuckin’ worse! This is -our- house!”

“We can come back in later, okay?”

“Fuck you, John, that idea blows and I’m not doing it. I say we go to the closet.”

“The closet that got torn apart the last time this shit happened?!”

“Alright, then, I say we get the sword an-“

“Dave, no, swords won’t work.”

“Dude, it’ll totally work, it’s a sword, and it’s awesome. I can jus-“

“DAVE, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, WE CAN’T EVEN SEE IT! HOW DO WE STAB WHAT WE CAN’T SEE?!” you yell, unable to handle one of Dave’s childish moments right now. This is not the time, nor the place for this kind of bullshit, and you find yourself wishing he could just figure that out on his own without you having to tell him. You wished he could just grow up.

The yell seemed to have startled the thing at the door, making it slow for a moment.

“Come on. Leave, leave, leave, leave, leave, leave, leaveleaveleaveleaveleaveleave,” you mutter under your breath, rising to your knees in preparation to run whether Dave wanted to or not.

“Then where do we go to hide..?” His voice is quiet, strained, trying not to let on how upset he is. He hates when he doesn’t catch onto things the first time, kicking himself a few minutes later when his mind catches up with the missed point.

You answer as you drag him off the bed and towards the opening door, lowering your head and turning your shoulder to act as a battering ram if needs be.

“BATHROOM!”

As expected, there’s nothing outside the door in your way, leaving the race to the safety of the bath tub largely uninhibited. It’s cold, cold enough you could feel pangs of ice running through your chest sharp as knives, and you swear you can hear whispering in your head before the door’s shut. You  grab two towels and hop into the deep tub, drawing the curtain closed tight. One towel goes behind your head as a cushion, the other around Dave’s shoulders as he spreads out atop you like water, all four limbs wrapped around your torso with his sharp chin resting on your breastbone.

The magic of hiding in the bath tub appears to work on mysterious invisible monsters as well as it works in some natural disasters. While there are some rustling sounds and thudding from the bedrooms, nothing disturbs your porcelain safe house for the remainder of the night.

“….John, what are we going to do? We can’t just leave, man, this is our house..”

“I don’t know. Maybe… Maybe we can ask them to leave? It’s not supposed to be like this.”

“I know. It’s not making any sense. Is there something we’re just too dumb to notice?”

“I wish it was that simple, so we could notice it already and get back to having nice, calm days..”

Dave was quiet for a time, listening to your heartbeat and the distant sounds of what was likely all the items in your closet being tossed around again. His cheek pressed warm against the front of your shirt, hair falling away enough to let you see his slender neck, the bony ridge of his back.

“Think it’ll be quiet tomorrow? Like we’d get time to recover before it starts up again, like last time? We could fight then, I’m sure of it. They can’t just be… you know, THERE.” The words Dave was wanting to use weren’t in his vocabulary just then, though they were normally. The changes were making him tense and upset, nonsensical, though he calmed when his back was rubbed.

“Let’s just try to catch a nap, and then we can regroup and re-plan once it’s gone.”

\---

Morning greets you in the tub with no towels, icy streams of water in your face turning towards warm as the shower adjusted itself. You sputter and cough, flailing your arms and legs to try getting up like a turtle trapped on its back, Dave trying to scrabble over the lip of the tub before he was squashed flat.

You’re cursing and knocking things over searching for a towel, freezing cold, teeth chattering. The bathroom door slams open and shut, thuds heading down the hallway as you reach your hand into the curtain to turn off the rogue water spout.

You were positive you heard a woman scream.

\---

Neither you, nor Dave had been able to put on a fresh change of clothes. While the bedroom door had opened easily at your touch, both of you shivering like damp kittens, there were no clothes to be found. None of yours, anyway. Your favorite t-shirts and button downs, sweaters and sweatshirts, wife beaters, boxers, pants. All gone from every drawer, closet empty once more.

In place of your belongings were girl’s clothes in pinks and pale blues, skirts and underthings that had no business in your dresser. None of them were even in Dave’s sizes. In the closet were beaten in t-shirts that looked masculine enough, albeit not in your preferred styles with their bright orange and cartoon colors beside dark greens and forest tones, as well as pants to pick and choose from.

If they took your clothes, you both reasoned, you would take yours right back till you were dry.

\---

You begin to notice patterns taking place as the weeks grind on. The slams and sounds increase whenever you cook, or play the piano.

You’ve no heart left to play with all the stress, so the original chords are now few and far between, usually only when Dave asks you to play so he can lean against you and watch your hands move in the dimness. When you’re not playing, there’s plenty of Chopin and Mozart, Bach and Beethoven  to be heard from the upright. Apparently, the monster can play quite well.

Neither of you are hungry very often anymore.  Now and then, one of you will smell freshly baked sweets, or the chemical scent of a soda pop. The fridge and the stove stay off and in place when you’re not touching them, but nightly you can smell different dishes. Spaghetti and meat sauce, pot pie, ribs, the fresh crisp scent of a salad. This new aerated menu becomes your main sustenance.

The screams and thuds happen more often when you feel up to making something simple like hamburgers, or oatmeal, pancakes on a rare occasion.

Dave’s quieter lately, holding tight to your arm, refusing to let go as you go for your daily walks around the yard. You stretch your legs, toes curling in the dew covered grass as you make it to the mail box and look around, listening to the breeze as it circled you warm and comforting. The brightness from outside never seems to reach your house, always dimmer.

You could leave.

You both could.

But it’s your house, and neither of you are giving up without a fight.

\---

Dave learned their names today.

After you had moved the living room furniture back to how the two of you wanted it and fallen asleep, one of the voices had called for a Jake and a Dirk, as well as a Janey to come see the scary living room. You wish you could see what they looked like.

You wish they’d leave.

You’re resentful as they complain about the winter and having to shovel the walkway clear, bring in new pieces of furniture, and begin changing things around. Tables have been exchanged, flooring and rugs swapped around. The bed you and Dave would share is gone now, replaced by a king size, leaving the two of you to either risk sleeping in the shower, or to curl up on the sofa at night.

Neither of you speak aloud more than necessary any longer, wandering in a close pair through the near pitch black of the house, trying to get a single look at these.. these thieves faces. This is your house. Yours and Dave’s, not theirs. You live like moles, unable to find the doors, unable to leave.

The voices are louder every day, and you fear you’ll be little more than wandering wisps in this darkness forever. Your lover squeezes your hand as if he knows precisely what you’re thinking. You squeeze back and feel your way to a chair for the evening, pulling him into your lap.

“Don’t worry, Dave. We’re gonna be okay.”

\---

It feels strange to ruin something you love so much, but it makes perfect sense when you look back to earlier. Absolutely perfect sense.

The houses interior was pure darkness, though your eyes stopped adjusting to make up the difference weeks ago. It was twenty steps from the kitchen into the living room. You had to count because otherwise you’d stumble and fall, break something on a shelf or risk shaking Dave loose. You can’t risk losing him in the darkness, leaving him alone. Your hands are always clasped nowadays.

Twenty steps in, you sit on the sofa, wincing at the ice cold that ran up your spine as you curl your arms  around Dave’s chest. His fingers clasp at your forearm and grip till you can almost feel his nails, increasing the pressure of your squeeze so he wouldn’t forget just who was holding him in the inky darkness.

Then, suddenly, there was light.

Bright, piercing light from a candle, displaying the tabletop and the house, releasing the strong scent of pumpkin pie into the air. Dave is more alert than he’s been for weeks, red eyes trained on the flame, hypnotized as you reach your hand out to touch it, enjoying the burn it gave you more than you’d like to admit. He hops off your lap and walks towards the light with outstretched hands once the voices leave you behind, patting at the tabletop till he finds the box of matches it was lit with.

There are no more candles that you can find, but it doesn’t matter. You have the matches in your possession as you feel your way upstairs (forty steps), brighter than suns when you strike and light them, holding them till they burn out in your hands one by one like dying stars.

The voices are complaining of the scent of brimstone in the halls, one of the voices (Jakey, Jakey, Jake English) joking that maybe their haunting had turned to demons. The Dirk voice said that was as likely as Beelzebub showing up to take a hefty flaming dump on the bed in the middle of the night.

Your name is John Egbert, and you are settled on your side in a bed that is not your own, in a room that was once yours as it is steadily growing brighter. You curl yourself into a fetal position, protectively hiding your lover away at your core, holding his hand as the room gets warmer. You can hear the voices again, screaming to get the important things they could reach out, to call 9-1-1.

There’s thudding and slamming doors, the shattering of the windowpane behind you as the heat takes it out along with the remainder of the box of matches you used to burn the clothes and drapes with. There’s more shattering from the other rooms you deposited the tiny balls of light into as the fire cleansed its surroundings.

“I love you, Dave.”

“I love you too, John.”

\---

Your name is Jane Crocker, and you just barely escaped your new home in one piece with the most important people in your life a month ago. Your father was kind enough to sign off a loan for you until the investigation finished up and the insurance kicked in from the house, though you’re skeptical at this point that you’ll ever see a dime of money back once you heard the word ‘arson’ from the investigators as they poked around the charred remains of the house.

The fixer upper had been old to begin with, carrying a checkered past that you chose to ignore in your search for bargains and the wide spaces you all needed for living. Given the strange happenings, however, you decided to sleuth a little deeper for possible hints as to what had led up to this.

The previous owner, John Egbert, had apparently killed himself in his bedroom with an overdose of sleeping tablets some years prior. The newspaper clippings had been that he was severely depressed following the sudden death of his boyfriend years earlier, and had slipped into delusions. Though treated, the strange behaviors had persisted as he continued to interact with the deceased teen as though he were beside him at all times. He graduated with honors, got a loan for a lovely fixer upper, and made it shine like new.

Not a week after he’d finished, paint still sparkling, he was dead.

You still hesitate to admit it was a haunting, even now. There’s no logical explanation for the moving furniture, the smells, the sounds, the cold spots. The business with the door handle being broken off still haunts your nightmares sometimes, certain that whatever had done it was some horrid monster hell bent on bringing you harm. Hauntings were illogical, and made no sense!

Ghosts aren’t real, and you wish Dirk and Roxy would agree with you.

\---

Your name is John Egbert, and you’re finally getting to relax after being busy for what feels like the longest time.

You’ve really earned this rest, you believe, and you have a distinct feeling that things are going to look up from here. Your morning finds you settled in your bed with your boyfriend,  mouth resting against his tender neck, holding him close as you can without harming him. He’s gone limp as a noodle while unconscious, toes pointed downwards, giving you easy access to sling a leg over his thighs protectively. You’re a second skin along his back, warm and comforting, feeling his heart beat steadily along with the gentle rise and fall of his chest.

Everything about him is perfect, and makes you so happy you’re here with him in your own wonderful home forever.

Every day you wake up to him being there, and every night you kiss him before going to sleep, knowing that the next day will be the same. Repetition in harmony for as long as you’re together, like two hands dancing around a clock face.

You feel your heart flip in your chest as he nestles backwards and smiles, tipping his head to look at you.

“Good morning John. I love you.”

“I love you too, Dave.”

**Author's Note:**

> Original tumblr link- http://themockingcrows.tumblr.com/post/41847090009/the-perfect-home


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